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you have now, keep listening. Welcome Jenn Lin. Welcome back to the Unpopular
fires that have been going on, I would be remiss to jump over that and not
mention anything. Considering when I came back from Laughlin on my trip from
Christmas vacation, I came right in to the fire. So everything was on fire when
I came back last Wednesday. So I have five points that I'm gonna go over and
cover and it's what happened. Number one, number two, two kinds of people. The two
kinds of people in that you're either prepared or unprepared. Third point,
disaster isn't selective and going over the whole social economics thing,
touching on that as a carryover of what I had discussed last week. It's a perfect
highlight of this. And four, control. What's in your control and what's out of
your control. And five, responsibility. So the first point, as I said before, I was
just returning back to California and started seeing all of the, hearing about
all of the LA fires. Definitely felt the wind as I was driving along. It was
quite strong and then hearing everything is on fire in the Malibu
Palisades area, which was concerning because my dad is in the area about eight
minutes away from the Palisades fires and there was no containment, no sign of
containment. I'm wondering if the fire was going to spread over to where he was
at. I believe that Santa Monica is pretty close to there and then had it hit
Santa Monica, it would have easily spread over to where in the area where my dad
was at in Culver City. I think he said it was about eight minutes away. So that was
a concern with all of that, trying to keep myself together amidst watching
this shitstorm that could have easily been minimized with priorities. If the
priorities were set straight from the beginning on the part of the California
government to include the governor, the mayor, and the fire chief, it's proved that
it's a clear misalignment of priorities and it definitely, I thought it would be a
good lesson to put out for you, my dear listeners, to think about your priorities
for yourself, for your families, and personally and anything else that you
might be responsible for. So I have these points for you to think about to be
able to at least get your head in the right place so that you can start
jotting down what's most important. That's ultimately what priorities are. It's
putting things in order of what you need to do first, very much like baking a
cake. You have, it's pretty straightforward when you're cooking
something, you first you get all of the ingredients together, then you mix
them, put certain things in a certain order for it to turn out right. And if
anything is out of order or there's a step that is skipped, it's not going to
turn out right. So just something to think about. So now you have two kinds of
people. You're either prepared or you're not prepared. When you think of that
story, the three little pigs, the first one built this house of straw, then twigs
for the second one, but the third one built his, he took a little bit longer.
He built his house out of bricks. It was nice and solid and wolf proof, most
likely fire proof. And the other two, they were just not paying attention. They
did a really crappy job building our houses. One was worse, one was a little
bit better, and then you have the best. So he took more time, had his priority
straight because he didn't want to have to worry about anybody blowing his house
over. And you have the Girl Scouts, they're known for being prepared. Military,
when I was in the military, we were always training, train as you fight. And
when I was a teacher, we had, coincidentally, we had fire drills and we
had earthquake drills. And then very recently, my last year of teaching in the
classroom, we had shooter drills. So that why? So that when all of these things
happen, we can respond and react with some degree of automaticity to where we're
not frozen and panicky. Because when you're under duress and anxiety, you're
either going to fight, flight or freeze. But if you practice what you need to be
doing before it happens, rehearse it out in your head and then practice it, you're
gonna be prepared for these things. And all of this did not happen in the state
of California. I can tell you that. Based off of everything that I see, because when
firefighters go to put out a fire and there's no water, hmm, and the mayor's not
there, hmm. And the governor only wants to make excuses about what everybody else
is doing and deflect everything. Hmm. There's a clear indication of a
misalignment of priorities. And when you're prepared, there's a buffer and you
can lessen the damages. When you have your priorities straight and you're able
to prepare, you can better survive until you can rebuild and get back to some
degree of your new normal. Because the bigger the disaster, the less likely that
your normal will ever be the same again. It's going to be different. You're going
to have a new normal. And the more you are unprepared in whatever it is, this
fire, LA fires is a very good example of what it looks like to not have your
priorities straight or be prepared. But it can be that way in your life as well.
So think about that. And then the third point is disaster is not selective. In
the last episode in You Matter, I talked about the big elephant in the room
being social economics. That's what people aren't talking about. People just
want to gloss over that and the differences between that. Well, you know, a
lot of it focuses on poor people not having what they need, systems not having
what they need. And wow, as we've just now seen in these LA fires, firefighters not
having what they need to include people competent, people who can do the job,
competent government, who can leaders, who can fulfill their responsibilities and
answer up to them when they're not done. And people pay taxes to be
expect to at least be safe. Please come out when you're in danger and when your
house is on fire to for the fire department to come out and help rescue
you. If you're stuck, right? If there's somebody people who can't do the job,
that's a big problem. And I would dare say that that's when funds are misappropriated,
that's stealing. That's stealing because you took money that should have been used
for safety and use it for other things. And that's all I'm gonna say. I'm not
really getting in. I'm not getting into the politics of things. I'm talking about
priorities and what was clearly not a priority. That was ensuring that the fire
department had what it needed to include competent people not fulfilling
motives. I'll just say that. Also, I talked about in the socioeconomics about it. A lot
of rich people, a lot of our Hollywood, they lost their fires, homes, pets, memories,
communities. And I was really saddened to see a lot of the hate going out. They're
all people just like us. And they're all also blessed. They probably do have more
homes. They have a better chance to probably rebuild most likely than we do.
The average person that loses everything or their business is gonna take us the
average person that people who are struggling a lot longer to do that. But
still, they're we're all human. And in this disaster, all people who are in LA,
whether you're rich or poor, you know, they all, everybody lost. And they all pay
taxes as well. And it's really sad for everybody. And anybody shame on you for
saying that you're glad that that happened to them too. You know, I'm a little
bit disappointed about that. But still. But on the flip, we have checked this out,
all of the exploitation going on. You got lawsuit people fishing for information
talking about, well, are you a victim of the LA fires? And then, you know, the
scammers are out trying to exploit all of the people in their misery. But the
weirdest part about that was just after I talked about, you know, we're all the
same and divide, you know, in what we lost. I heard about the Kardashians
putting out a go fine made for Paris Hilton's billion dollar mansion to the
public. Now each one of those Kardashians probably won by themselves could
probably help Paris themselves without putting a dent in their net worth. But
they're going to go and head out to go find me for other people who don't have
a pot to piss in that they're supposed to contribute to her mansion. That's
pretty unrealistic and that's selfish. And that I would say is exploitation. And
that the Kardashians clearly don't have a sense of priorities or or any shame in
that this pretty sad control. That's my next point. You either have control or,
you know, things are either in your control or they're not in your control.
And what you want to think about is, did you or are you doing what's in your
control now to manage the damage control? So it's all about controllers now to
manage all of the the damages that could happen now or in the future. Did you or
are you doing what's in your control? You think for yourself and are those
people in authority doing what they're supposed to do? Did they do it? And and
you think about authority. What is authority? It could be your mothers,
teachers, CEOs and government. And I went out on a limb and looked up
accountability. What the top five things regarding authority of what they should
be doing. What the tasks of what they're the average person in authority is
supposed to do. And that would be accountability, support and development,
communication to make sure it's free flowing. For support and development,
you naturally nurture your people to make sure that they are growing in
education, that they know what they need to know for their tasks, their
responsibilities, that the communication is free flowing, that things are fair
and consistent, that people are competent, that they're competent in what they
are doing and safety and well-being, that that that they're safe and that
you're not mismanaging money. It's really, I mean, those are the five, five
basic things of what you're supposed to do when you're an authority figure.
And I know I'm going a little bit over time, but I think this is really
important. I just saw my last point. I did say that I wasn't going to go over
a half hour, but so I'm well within my limits. Responsibility versus accountability.
Sometimes people think that they're interchangeable, very similar.
They're in the same family in the same arena, but they're not.
They're very different. One is a part of the other. It's very much like all
rectangles are squares, but all squares are not rectangles. Kind of like that.
So responsibility, it's an obligation to perform assignment of tasks.
That's responsibility. Accountability is who is answerable for
the outcomes, whether they're success or failures, but especially the failures.
Think about all of the things that even in your household growing up when
you're at school, when you're at work, you're assigned a task.
And if you fail, there's a consequence. People don't focus so much on the successes.
But if you mess up, they're going to want a name to blame.
Somebody told me once there's a little bird that goes flying around and he's
looking in his name is blame and he's looking for somebody to land on.
And you want to make sure he does not land on you.
So making sure he doesn't land on you.
The blame is to make sure that you have your priorities straight, that you know
know your tasks and anybody that you are in charge of knows their tasks,
that they have those five basic things down.
Because guess what? If you don't have that done, I mean, you have to look out
for yourself, but if you're in authority, it's not just about being large and in
charge. It's about that accountability that when the shit hits the fan,
you're the one that's going to go down, not so much your charges.
It's who was, who was responsible for making sure that you were safe,
that you knew what you needed to know, that you are competent, that you were
supported and developed and that you things are fair.
If you are that one, well, you know, you've got to be accountable.
And the more the higher up the more that you're responsible for people as the
people increase, as the money increases, the bigger the budget, the more people
you are in authority for.
And especially when they can die or destruction happens and mismanagement,
you don't have your priorities straight and things are mismanaged.
There's a misalignment of priorities.
The consequences are worse if you fail and the accountability is much heavier
when you're an authority figure.
Those that are rushing to be large and in charge, it's not just about being a boss,
it's being a leader, making sure that you have your responsibilities for yourself
and for everybody else taking care of, minding your peas and queues,
crossing those teas, dotting those eyes and nobody's immune.
Even if you're an older brother or sister babysitting, you're the oldest sibling.
I'm an oldest sibling and growing up, if something wasn't done, it didn't matter
if it was my brother's responsibility.
I was the oldest, I was the authority figure.
I'm the one who took the hit.
I'm the one that got spanked.
I'm the one that got punished because I was in charge as a mother, teacher, military leader.
All of the positions that I had in authority, I was in charge and any damages, losses,
anything to do with money, misappropriation of funds, I had to take the consequence.
If my family screwed up when I was in the military, I got in trouble.
Not them.
I got in trouble.
Not my students.
If something happened with my son, if he got in trouble, I got in trouble because he was just a kid.
That's accountability and the bigger the consequence, that's when fines, jail, and loss of my privileges.
That's why we have law.
That's why we have prisons and consequences for people who don't account for their responsibilities.
If I failed as a teacher, you see it every day, people, ordinary people.
If we don't do what's, we don't handle our responsibilities, then we are accountable and we get swift consequences.
And look at what's happened with these L.A. fires.
Nothing but blame shifting, deflecting the blame as if they were not responsible.
A governor, a mayor, and a fire chief, all with clear, misaligned priorities and no accountability.
I definitely will be going over priorities and how you can align your priorities correctly,
how you can prepare for emergencies and not just disasters,
but maybe even personal disasters to make sure that the things that you want in life will come a lot easier
and the things that are out of your control that you'll be able to handle them a little bit better.
That is it for this episode.
I hope that I've given you a lot to think about.
And we'll see you in the next episode, next Wednesday.
Stay curious.
Bye for now.
This is Jenn Lin.
Thank you for listening.
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